In October I met a woman at the Scrap Paper Airplanes event at the library. She gave me a sixteen pointed star made of strips of paper. It was pretty awesome, but there wasn't time to sit down and learn how to make it just then. So last week, we met at the library and made a few so that I now know how to make them!
This is my first attempt at weaving paper together to make origami. I've always focused on using a single sheet of paper without cuts, for the sake of purity. There's a beauty in knowing that you can fold the model anywhere at any time with nearly any single sheet. The universality is nice. So it's cool to find something that makes me question that puritanical streak.
This star model is woven together out of four strips of paper. I cut mine from a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet, making 1cm strips. A good size strip would be about 1 x 28, maybe a little shorter.
The woman who taught me had learned it from her mother years ago. I did a little research and found that they are often called Moravian stars because of their resemblance to the illuminated decorations. They are also known as German stars, Swedish stars and Froebel's star. I found a good site that talks about strip folding and has information about this star in particular.
These pictures probably aren't enough for you to divine the fold pattern, so if you want to try your hand, I recommend these diagrams.
Good luck!
Very fun.
ReplyDelete